THE MODERN ART GALLERY — INSTAGRAM VS BEHANCE
by Rithika Pillai & Bhargavi Sridharan
Two popular social media applications make it easy and accessible for artists to create business profiles that are aesthetically pleasing.
Behance and Instagram, launched in 2005 and 2010 respectively, started out with different objectives but ever since the wave of ‘all-in-one’ has entered the market, Instagram has managed to grab the attention of upcoming artists.
Manek D’Silva, a Bengaluru based illustrator and designer, has experimented with both. He is popular for his online adventure comic series, Bonabyl, and has also curated digital art for various brands.
“On a basic level, Behance is the more focused professional network because pretty much everyone who visits the site already has some interest or experience with the design so you’re interacting mostly with peers, whereas Instagram is larger and much more random, so you’re interacting with consumers”, said D’Silva.
Instagram and Behance published their annual reports which showed the growth of the apps over the year. Instagram, jumped from an 800 million user base to 1 billion in 6 months and announced that the community has 25 million active businesses. Whereas, Behance, acquired by Adobe, which currently has a 10 million user base comes under a niche category of applications where artists are exposed to other artists and potential employers.
One of the popular artists on both platforms, Vijaya Aswani, who goes by the handle ‘Spreefirit’, believes that both have its set of pros. As an artist, Aswani prefers both and has divided the kind of works that goes into each.
“Behance is for showing a flow of projects from the birth of the idea to final execution. Whereas Instagram is like a visual diary”, Aswani claimed.
After studying the market trends, Instagram launched its business tool and gave creators the choice to develop a professional space on social media. The tool provides the user with a cognitive analysis of the profile and the activities on it. The tool has come a long way and now includes an icon which directs you to buy the product. These features are working towards reducing the gap between the artist and the consumers.
Behance’s most recent updates included ‘For you’ and ‘Work in progress’ — the first one curates an art feed based on your likes (instead of the most popular works) and the latter allows the artist to share the process behind their projects.
Rohit Bhasi, a freelance illustrator and visual designer at IBM is of the opinion that Behance does not offer the kind of interaction that Instagram does.
He said that artists always want recognition for their work, however “introverted” they are, and hence a site like Instagram or any other with a social media framework which can connect you to thousands of viewers is recommended to artists who are starting out their online careers.
“It’s like an isolated island, with only artists, and very limited interaction with those who like your work. Behance could use a lot of sharing and interactivity because your work is only limited to other artists. Instagram on the other hand, because of its social media framework, using the right hashtags gains you a larger, more diverse audience and artists get a lot of job recommendations in that way. The Instagram stories option is also brilliant!”
Other than professionals who have managed to lay their hands on both the interfaces, students are also taking a gamble on these applications.
Sheetal Jacob, a student from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology is of the opinion that using Behance feels more professional in terms of enhancing your portfolio, whereas Instagram is a great marketing tool.
“Instagram has done a good job, not only increasing viewership for artists, but it’s also easy to use.”
As both Behance and Instagram have a different audience, Jacob claimed that it would be difficult to suggest changes for either app. Jacob said the problem lied in the fact that many sites exist but are unknown due to lack of exposure.
“An ideal framework would be one which combines the two sites and especially the faster needs that Instagram caters to”, said Jacob.
In order to understand a student’s perspective on these two apps, a survey was crafted to understand their preferences, likes and dislikes about the applications and their ideal version of an application for artists.
The survey gives an insight into what the users are expecting and clearly there are wins on both sides. While the preference to start out lies with Instagram, artists are looking for more applications like Behance to be developed. According to the report and the survey, Instagram, with a diverse user base has flourished over the years but Behance fails to be as popular due to the lack of support for artists in terms of viewership.
Joanna Davala, Illustrator and Founder at Little Fox Films, an active user of both Behance and Instagram also believes that both applications come with different applications, it is the artist’s choice to see which platform is suitable to get their art out.
“Currently the ideal app is Instagram. It’s easy to use and people apart from artists are on it unlike Behance, which is used predominantly by creatives. So maybe just Instagram with a little more structure and a little less compression of photo and video quality.”
The overall take on both the applications, whether by artists or students is on the same page — one has the scope to reach a larger audience whereas the other creates a niche group of appreciators.
